Trans-Formation

While doing my masters I've been giving a lot of thought to briefs that I did in my undergrad. My process, how I personalised them, disrupted them and the mistakes I made. I can always do better. I'm considering how all this can inform the work I'm doing given the change in environment. This project was a third year project from my degree called Transformation. The objective was to take two old garments de-construct them and produce a collection based on each piece. I personalised this by creating a narrative for the execution of the illustrations. I did some research into some of Leigh Bowery's work and how he re-appropriated female gender stereotypes by exaggerating proportions and changing the silhouette. I was thinking along the lines of 'Trans-gender' and 're-Formation' which fit nicely for me into what was for the most part a technical brief.

                                            

 

Title Sequence

Digital Tools Assignment  - MSc Creative Digital Media

For this brief we had to re-imagine the title sequence from an existing film. I re-imagined the opening sequence of 2001 A Space Odyssey as an animated movie.

Cinemagraph

NeoCamp @lukehowlin Cinemagraph by Mark Dempsey @CardBoardCookie

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Super Mario Brothers Original 8 Bit

From the website

"Full Screen Mario is a fully HTML5 remake of the original Super Mario Brothers. You can play the original levels, play through some of literally millions of possible random maps, or create your own using the level editor. This whole project is open source and free"

While I am currently a non gamer that wasn't always strictly the case. This game holds copious amounts of nostalgia for me from playing it as a kid. Then digital games were not as prolific as they are today. Games and games consoles were quite expensive at the time as we weren't in the Euro, they were imported and in the mid eighties to mid nineties we were economically in a different place. My interest in gameing growing up consisted of playing games on the Atari 800  my uncle had then the Atari 1600 and later owning and playing games on the Commodor 64. I remember playing the original 'Mario Bros' on the original Nintendo, I'm not sure if it was one my friend owned or it was one we rented from the local Video (VHS) Store. As the years progressed and the bit count in consoles increased I got a Super Nintendo with which I used to play 'Street Fighter'. My friend had a Sega Mega Drive with a few games that I can't now really recall.  

While this is not exactly the same without the control pad, once I became familiar with the keyboard controls I remembered how it was Mario's control system that made the game both frustrating and addictive. It's just so hard to tell if you have enough speed or height to make that jump and usually you don't. Playing this reminded me of how my heart used to thump when I would make any progress, knowing that the lack of understanding of the controls would lead to my inevitable demise. The graphics are uber cute in their original 8 Bit form and hold up really well as does the soundtrack. All in all I really enjoyed the hour and a half I spent playing this. I would avoid it your in the office, it could become a productivity sink hole.  

Dixit

As a non gamer I found Dixit to be visually playful and good fun. Like most games you could become competitive as it is in essence a race, but the novelty of this game is its reliance upon the participants individual levels of creativity and story telling. The more random and obscure your story relating to the card the other players must match is probably this games greatest achievement, it is in this space that lies the fun.
The more ambiguous  and nuanced you are in telling your story, the less likely you are to entice another player to bet on your card. The more accurate you are, the chances of the other players guessing your card increase which looses you points. It's a balancing act, that as you move through the game will become more refined. If none of the players or all of them picks the storytellers picture, the storyteller scores 0, and each of the other players scores 2. Otherwise the storyteller and all the players that bet on the storytellers card score 3. It is as one of the players described when I played, the 'Salvador Dhali' of board games with surrealist themed visuals with sometimes just as surreal user generated narratives. An example of a story I used was 'Electricity Supply Board' which had everything and nothing to do with the card I had selected, but also injected enough of a 'WTF moment' into the game, to give the players an acute dose of the LOLz.
Dixit would make an great after dinner party game when you get a handle on the rules, which make sense after a dry run. It's not too serious but is rewarding on two fronts, creatively and competitively both in terms of racing to the finish but also who can be more creative, humorous, faster with their narratives than other players. If you wanted to grease the wheels a little you could add some wine, it'll to give the creativity levels a shot in the arm. According to the sales assistant in the shop a game of Dixit is a thing of beauty when surrounded by a group of child players who's imaginations don't have the restrictions that limit adult players in their story telling. If a grown up is brave enough to play with a group of children they're usually beaten and beaten bad. 

Neo-Politik

I  recently styled a Photoshoot for CULT Magazine feat actress Eva Jane Gaffney. The concept consisted of a young Joseph Stalin transcending the space time continuum and meeting Margaret Thatcher in 1979. This Joseph Stalin is untouched by his future legacy and at this point remains idealistic. He is 23. Their ensuing political discord and widely divergent philosophies inflame a passion that consumes them. Margaret is more mature, Joseph is far younger but her intellectual equal.The social and economic backdrop is austere the music is Kraftwerk.

 

 

All clothes courtesy of GollyGosh Boutique Crown Street Temple Bar Dublin

Art Direction and Styling: Mark Dempsey

Photography: Tess Bunworth

Models:  Eva Jane Gaffney & Aodhan

As featured in Cult available online here

A Multidimensional Construct of the Self

According to Sharon Gill, Body Image is "a multidimensional construct of the self, consisting of how individuals think, feel and behave regarding their own physical attributes. It comprises the various cognitions an individual has about his/her body, as well as the behaviours he/she engages in as a means of maintaining and enhancing physical appearance"

Below is the Thesis I wrote for my Bachelors Degree accompanied by its Wordle(the bigger the word the more it's used.) This was a difficult endeavor. Due not only to a particularly heavy studio workload but also the challenge of writing a body of work such as this and how the breadth of research and its subsequent writing has challenged the prism through which I view myself, the world and my place in it. I wrote most of it while I should have been doing studio work or sleeping. It is one of the pieces I left my degree with that I'm most proud of. 



An Exploration Into Body Image Issues In Gay Men

Cut The World

At the beginning of this video during an extremely endearing monologue I think Antony fears he may be loosing his audience while talking about the Corals -something he feels deeply passionate about- only to pull them right back again with a sharp dose of wit. He continues with 'Cut The World' which is one of the most moving live vocals I have ever heard, it is stunning! I would recommend sticking in your earphones and listening to it full blast.

Progress Trap

"Every time history repeats itself the price goes up."



TRAILER SURVIVING PROGRESS from AMBULANTE on Vimeo.

This is the trailer of a documentary I watched recently about progress, good progress and bad progress and how humans haven't really evolved in about 50,000 years. It deals with many themes and narratives that we intersect with daily, technology, debt, the possibility of economic, social, political and financial collapse, global warming, consumption and consumerist behavior and how that interacts with a biosphere of limited resources. We exist in an infinite growth paradigm, a paradigm which is based on the consumption of finite resources. There are 2 Billion consumers in this paradigm with 5 Billion more aspiring to take part. Progress? Martin Scorsese is Exec producer, it is well worth the watch. The full length version is available to watch in five parts on Youtube.

From the website

"Surviving Progress presents the story of human advancement as awe-inspiring and double-edged. It reveals the grave risk of running the 21st century’s software — our know-how — on the ancient hardware of our primate brain which hasn’t been upgraded in 50,000 years. With rich imagery and immersive soundtrack, filmmakers Mathieu Roy and Harold Crooks launch us on journey to contemplate our evolution from cave-dwellers to space explorers." more here

Ich R U

BOYS NOIZ

BOYS NOIZE - ICH R U from Sebastien Loghman on Vimeo.

gitHub

 

From TED

'The open-source programming world has a lot to teach democracy, says Clay Shirky.
In this fascinating talk from TEDGlobal 2012, Shirky harkens back to the early days of the printing press. At the time, a group of “natural philosophers” (who would later adopt the term “scientists”) called the Invisible College realized that the press could offer a new way to share and debate their work. However, because printing books would be far too slow for this purpose, they came up with a new invention — the scientific journal. So what does this mean for us today?' Shirky explains, “If I had to pick a group that I think is our Invisible College — our generation’s collection of people trying to take new tools and press them into the service of, not more arguments, but better arguments — I’d pick the open-source programmers.” Read the rest..

Collaboration

Howard Rheingold

Online communities are as legitimate as proximate (traditional) communities?

An article by Mark Dempsey:

The word community is defined as a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. Can people that use Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) be considered as living, working and existing in the same space but not in the same place? As such is it justifiable to consider them a community? Social media users and ‘Digital Natives’ are considered to be the largest constituency in the 2012 American Presidential race. Given the difference in demographics and the varying locations of this constituency to each of its participants, is it fair to consider them a constituency? In ‘Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and the Internet’ we are given reasons for and against considering digital natives belonging to certain groups to be a community. The reasons given against are “Computer networks isolate us from one another, rather than bring us together…. Computers teach us to withdraw, to retreat into the warm comfort of their false reality … only the illusion of community can be created in cyberspace.”1 To the contrary according www.intergov.org “The Internet has opened a whole new frontier that has brought every person in the world together in one place. The internet is a world within itself; it is a virtual community of hundreds of millions of citizens from every corner of the planet. No longer do personal differences separate the seven billion citizens of the Worlds 244 nations; we are now one people united together.”2 
 
In relation to the impact on communities, of CMC technologies, the positions held on both sides of the debate have strong arguments that tend to fall into language that can exaggerate the argument. The position against hold the view that CMC technologies “like the internet are to blame for the loss of real, offline communities and so-called online communities are not proper communities anyway.”3 While the view held on the opposing side stating that “New communication technologies, and especially the internet, make possible exciting, new communities and help reinvigorate or enhance existing offline communities.”4 Further to these two statements what a community is and the evolving nature of what we consider a community to be will be explored in the subsequent paragraphs.

The internet as described by Howard Rheingold is an “ecosystem of subcultures”5. This is derived from the process and experience of sharing “with unseen others”6 by the participants which cultivates a sense and feeling of belonging. According to Patricia Wallace who elaborates on the ‘Global Village’ metaphor but frames it in the context of “the Internet is not really like that most of the time with respect to human interaction it is more like a huge collection of distinct neighbourhoods where people with common interests can share information, work together…”7 Sociological studies and endeavours despite exploration in the areas of community and feelings of group belonging has done so without reaching consensus on what a community is. Internet facilitated communication has created platforms that enable people to communicate both individually and in groups in a semi public sphere. This has encouraged the sharing of creative works, information, media, news, video and games. As such this has led to the study CMC to inhabit the area in which sociology and communication studies converge. Given the position held by traditional communities in society it would be naive to think that online communities could hold the same weight of respect in a societies psyche. Most people when faced with the question of what is a community would think of the archetypical community structure. With digital natives however this is evolving given the sharing between groups and the feelings of belonging experienced by these groups. That said there have been a number of criticisms that have faced the development of online communities that include “the lack of commitment between members, the lack of moral cohesion, the lack of global access”8 . Nancy Baym in her studies on online communities exposes the fact that there has been no comparative studies undertaken to explore the effect online communities has had on the traditional communities and sees problems with the idea that they have. She says “it is fundamentally reductionist to conceptualize all ‘Virtual Communities’ as a single phenomenon and hence to asses them with a single judgement [there are] countless thousands of offline groups that vary tremendously. Some groups are surely bad for offline life but there is no reason to believe that most are”. Offline archetypical communities are based on proximity, this is how people meet and interact. As such they would have a diversified range of interests, principals, belief systems, ideology’s in many areas such as sport, politics, religion, art and culture. Howard Rheingold said in 1993 that”CMC liberates interpersonal relations from the confines of physical locality and thus creates opportunity for new genuine communities”. 9 Criticism of online communities and an ability to find community online is a question largely asked by people who have yet to experience it. Does CMC create proper community? According to Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and The Internet “The question whether or not one can find community online is asked largely by those who do not experience it. Committed participants in email bulletin boards, chat lines [and] MUDS… have no problem accepting that communities exist online and that they belong to them” 10 Online communities have the opportunity to connect on the basis of shared value systems, shared beliefs and more specifically common interests. The many examples of online communities can counter the arguments made that CMC is “unsocial, cold and task focused.”11 As a result Rheingold states “online communities are social aggregations that emerge from the net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships.”12 Rheingolds assertion is that people or groups only begin to feel like a community once the individuals in that group are there and involved long enough to feel like they are part of that community. According to a hypothesis put forward my Benedict Anderson “all communities larger than primordial villages of face to face contact are imagined.”13 These communities are meaningful and have power influences over people’s lives so because they may be strictly imagined does not mean they are not real. The important point that Anderson was trying to make was that community despite traditionally held beliefs is not about places or numbers it’s about activities and feelings. The four social processes that Bayn predicts community emerging through are forms of expression (e.g. our talking about our communities), identity (our shared sense of group identity), relationship (our connections and interactions with others in the community), norms (the rules and conventions we agree to live together).14 The use of CMC is facilitating the evolution of communities from the traditional example to ones formed on common interest and feeling. Just as in traditional communities the evolution of these CMC mediated communities is based on a foundation of practice and memory. This can be seen in people that “feel a part of online communities, they talk about their online friendships networks as communities and they share a history of interaction together.”15
 
Digital natives that belong to online communities come in many forms, creators, pirates, aggressors, innovators and learners. Wikipedians as an example have an official and non-negotiable neutral point of view policy.16 They have developed norms of behaviour and standards that need to adhered to for instance it has a requirement that “articles should be written without bias, representing all views fairly”17 These types of norms are much more prevalent in strong communities, they are clear, known to all members and are followed strictly. The standards can vary in different communities with differing rules and adherences this helps with the “dissemination of information and the quality of that information”18 In a similar community fashion Facebook users found them using Facebook’s own facilities when the newsfeed was introduced. It was an introduction that inspired a revolt. Within hours of the newsfeeds launch and due to privacy concerns, hundreds of thousands of users had mobilized into a group. This mobilization caused Facebook executives to acknowledge these concerns and acknowledgement from Mark Zukerberg, the founder of Facebook that “we really messed up on this one.”19
 
Groups and communities that have come about due to CMC are still at a young evolutionary stage. It will be fascinating to see how they evolve into the future, with the dismantling of the digital divide as CMC becomes available to a wider pool of people. As more people get online and more communities are created we will see how these communities interact and grow with communities that are created due to proximity. The traditional communities may not be as under threat as traditionalist might think. Online communities may begin to synergise with their offline counterparts, promoting the breaking down of traditional barriers that keep communities offline segregated. They may help inter community co-operation and sharing of information offline like they do online. Traditional communities will always be around as will online communities. It will be interesting to see how they evolve in tandem and if hybrids will begin to emerge from their interaction and add a whole new dimension to what people view as a community. The key factor here is that the participants feeling of involvement and belonging in relation to online communities legitimizes there existence. They exist because participants feel part of them and as such will continue to do so.

References
1, 2, 3, 4 Lengel, Thurlow, Tomic, A.T., C.T., L.L. 2004. Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and The Internet. 1st ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd. P107, 108.

5, 6 Crystal, D.C, 2006. Language and the Internet. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P63.

7 Lister, Dovey, Giddings, Grant, Kelly, M.L, J.D, S.G, I.G, K.K., 2006. New Media: A Critical Introduction. 1st ed. New York: Routledge. P175

8, 9 Lengel, Thurlow, Tomic, A.T., C.T., L.L. 2004. Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and The Internet. 1st ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd. P109, P112.
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Lengel, Thurlow, Tomic, A.T., C.T., L.L. 2004. Computer Mediated Communication: Social Interaction and The Internet. 1st ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd. P111, 112.

16,17,18,19 Palfrey, Gasser, J.P, U.G, 2008. New Media: A Critical Introduction. 1st ed. New York: Basic Books. P174

Bubbles

A TED Talk about filtering online content visa vie, Google search results, Facebook news feeds and online news results. Confronting the effects of tailor made algorithms that return results based on what information a person wants instead of information a person might need.






TED on Data Storage

CO2

How Green Is Your Internet? from Dan Ilic on Vimeo.

Ageless

Youth in Trouble

My favourite band of the past decade, The Presets, return with a new video 'Youth in Trouble' to lead the new album 'Pacifica'.


   

Balance to the force returned it has!

via

Irish Rail

White Collar Boy playing on the 11.10 Dublin to Waterford Train on the 21st June 2012






Via Broadsheet

Rising

My Degree Collection 'Showdown In Neo-Tokyo' is featured in a new book 'Europe: Rising Fashion Designers'

I love him, I love him

Bjork Live, every song is a treasure..